The night split open with lightning over the Dakota plains. Out there, alone in the grass sea, stood the skeleton of St. Augustine Church - its steeple crooked, its wooden frame withered by time and silence. A weather-beaten sign swung on rusted chains, groaning against the wind. Grave markers leaned like tired souls.

Inside, candlelight flickered, though no one had lit a match in decades.

Jessie Turner stood in the center aisle, unmoving. He was taller now - his boyish edges sanded down by fire and consequence. The air around him shimmered faintly, reality bending, unsure whether to reject or accept him. Red light glowed faintly in his eyes - not evil, not demonic, but ancient and infinite.

Behind him, the heavy church doors slammed shut.

"You really want it to end here?" came a voice.

Jessie didn't turn. "Where it began."

A year ago, in Hell.

The Pit twisted in eternal flame, rivers of molten light cascading into endless chasms. Jessie walked beside Lucifer, the Devil's footsteps unhurried. Around them, tormented souls screamed and looped their suffering like broken music boxes.

"They'll never accept you," Lucifer said, almost gently. "Heaven fears you. Hell wants to use you. Me? I'm offering you the truth."

Jessie stared out over the inferno. "Why help me?"

Lucifer gave a grin that might've passed for kind, in the wrong light. "Because you're me? if I'd been born in a crib instead of the clouds."

In the church, Jack Kline entered cautiously. He wore a battered hoodie, grace leaking from beneath his skin like trapped lightning. He looked at Jessie the way someone stares at a once-loved memory turned violent.

"You're hurting people," Jack said softly.

"They were already hurting," Jessie replied. "I just took the leash off."

Jack stepped closer. "This isn't who you are."

Jessie finally turned. "No. This is exactly who I am."

The walls twisted. Statues bled. With a single motion, Jessie sent Jack crashing back into the pews with a blast of force.

Outside, reality was breaking.

The town folded in on itself - buildings floated like paper, time rewound and skipped like a warped tape. Civilians flickered in and out of existence. Sam and Dean stood at the edge, weapons useless against what this had become.

Dean clenched his jaw. "We're just gonna stand here?"

Sam watched the storm. "This isn't our fight anymore. It's his."

Somewhere deeper - beyond time, beyond Earth - Jessie and Jack stood on a black ocean that reflected no stars. The Void Realm.

"You don't have to do this," Jack said.

Jessie's hand raised, forming a spiral of inverted light.

"I never had a choice."

Their powers clashed - Jack's soul-fire wings colliding with Jessie's collapsing singularity of energy. Each strike tore into the realm. Space shattered like glass.

"I don't want to fight you," Jack gasped.

"Then kneel," Jessie said coldly.

The battle spilled into the Cosmic Plane.

They fought in a storm of fractured worlds - shards of Heaven, broken spires of Hell, the Empty itself swirling like ink in water. Amid the chaos, Lucifer appeared, clapping as though watching theater.

"Come on, kid. Take him out. Finish what I started."

Jessie paused.

Jack stood bloodied, panting, grace flickering. "You're not his weapon. You never were."

Jessie's gaze shifted. "What if I don't want to stand next to anyone?"

Lucifer's smile dropped. "You're making a mistake."

Jessie raised his hand. "Then I'll make it mine."

He turned - not to save Jack, not out of justice - but to steal power.

He attacked Lucifer.

The air screamed as a three-way war erupted.

Lucifer conjured a blade forged from celestial fire. Jessie bent space into black lattice thorns that ripped through dimensions. Jack, barely standing, gathered his final strength.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

He unleashed a blast from his soul - pure, desperate, final. It wasn't meant to kill. It was meant to trap.

A prison formed, born of broken souls and collapsing dimensions. It swallowed Lucifer.

And Jessie.

Inside, time slowed.

"You can still choose," Jack said, voice trembling. "But it has to mean something."

Jessie looked at Lucifer - writhing, furious. Then at Jack.

"Tell them I didn't just break the cycle."

He smiled, barely.

"I buried it."

And then they vanished.

Silence. Static flickered across the monitors in the Men of Letters bunker.

Dean paced. "So? he's gone?"

"Not gone," Castiel said. "Not dead."

Sam watched the screen fade to black. "Changed."

Epilogue.

Jessie floated through a twilight forest built from memory and starlight. It was peaceful, too peaceful. The kind of stillness that grows teeth if you stay too long.

He stared upward. Nothing above. Nothing below. Everything in between.

If I come back, his voice echoed through the void, slow and distant,

pray the world's ready.

The world shivered.

And somewhere, embers sparked.